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Chapter 27: Silence Has Its Own Fragrance

It will appear absurd to the logical mind, but the fact is that blissfulness has its own perfume, silence has its own fragrance, just as love has its own taste, its own sweetness. Although you cannot eat love and you cannot taste love, you know perfectly well that love has a sweetness.

Silence also has its own flowers, its own fragrance. And the enlightened man’s consciousness can be approached through any of your senses. You can see it in his presence, in his grace, in his eyes; in his gestures you can smell it. You can hear it, just a small whisper, as if a breeze has passed through the pine trees - subtle, but absolutely certain. You can taste it.

The night Jesus departed from his disciples - you must all remember the last supper - he talked to them for the last time. And what he said seems to be very strange. He said, “You have to eat me and you have to drink me. And unless you eat me and drink me and digest me, unless I become your blood, your bones, your marrow, you will not be able to find me.” Certainly he was not speaking to cannibals. He was talking about this subtle phenomenon which is available only to disciples and devotees.

When I go out, you have been through a great shower of love, peace, silence, song, music and dance. Your whole being is cleansed. You feel the freshness, you feel the profundity, so tangible that if your eyes are closed you may think I am still present here - but in a certain way nothing changes, only my body moves away from here.

I am always present - wherever love longs for me and a heart beats for me, wherever a consciousness searches for me, I am available there.

Both Gautam Buddha and Mahavira, the greatest masters the Indian tradition has produced, made it a rule that their sannyasins should move in groups of five. In the beginning I could not figure it out - why five? And for twenty-five centuries Jaina monks and Buddhist monks and nuns have moved.the group cannot be less than five - it can be more. Now it is a dead tradition: they follow it, they don’t know its meaning. I have asked many Jaina monks, many Buddhists; they say, “We are simply following the scriptures.”

But as I became aware that the enlightened consciousness has all the qualities which your five senses can experience, then I had a clue. Buddha himself, and Mahavira himself, too, used to make up the groups of five sannyasins - to move, to spread the message. It was not at random, it was not any five, just because they were friends. They were chosen by Gautam Buddha and Mahavira themselves.

And my own experience is, they were chosen for this simple reason: that one was more sensitive as far as his eyes were concerned, and another was more sensitive as far as his ears were concerned, and another was more sensitive as far as his taste was concerned. Those five people were almost the five senses, together the most sensitive five, so whenever they will meditate in silence, it will be far easier for the consciousness of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira to be present amongst them.